Every baseball fan with more brain cells than fingers can tell you that teams wearing throwback uniforms is a brilliant idea. From both a stylistic and a marketing standpoint, bringing back classic designs not only celebrates the game’s rich history, it provides a fashionable wrinkle during a protracted regular season marked by humidity, pitchers stepping off, batters stepping out and additional delays for replay review.
Paradoxically, old designs help keep the game fresh and new, but teams should not decide to go retro merely for the nostalgia itself. The old Houston Astros rainbow uniforms left lasting memories, but no one wants to bring those back for more than one or two games a year as a lark. Similarly, the Chicago White Sox should never again wear shorts during games.
Instead, only the best aspects of retro MLB design should be carried forth, with a keen sense for both timelessness and era-specific kitsch. The Chicago Cubs wore nine throwback uniforms for the 100th anniversary of Wrigley Field, which is slight overkill but still very prudent.
Renewing the retro look offers new opportunity, not just to sell more caps and jerseys, and not just to cheer for bygone days, but also to reinvent the present, which is especially necessary for two teams without a World Series title to their credit: the San Diego Padres and Milwaukee Brewers.
This list by no means forms an exhaustive compendium of retro style in need of a resurgence, but these five designs need to come back in some form, from more pinstripes and different caps to increased simplicity and more powder blue.